SATELLITE SALES SOAR; SYSTEMS OFFER MORE BANG FOR BUCK

The 18-inch satellite Dish Network is one of the popular small satellite receiver dishes that can be mounted on the side of a house instead of a pole in the yard.

Home satellite systems are becoming more and more popular, especially in rural areas. Many in the business say it's because they're economical, convenient and entertaining.

"People are saying the heck with cable and buying satellite dishes," said Doyle Parmer, the owner of Dutchtown Electronics, which sells satellite dishes.

Parmer said that the prices of satellite dishes have gone down drastically, and more and more people are buying them. He sells most of his satellites to rural families, where cable is not always readily available.

Parmer and others who sell satellite dishes say that the newest technology has allowed for smaller, digital, 18-inch dishes to become available. They allow for the same quality and number of channels while not taking up as much space as the C-band satellites.

He said the 18-inch satellites came on the market in May.

Roy Joyce, owner of the Dishdoctor, said that more than 150 channels can be received through the small dish, which rotates to pick up the varying signals. His business installs, maintains and sells the dishes.

The dishes are expected to last about 15 years, he said, and are virtually maintenance free. While the satellite dishes are more popular in rural areas, Joyce said, he added that the number of in-town dishes is increasing.

"We sell them to people in the city more and more often," he said. "They're catching on here, too."

Two of the most popular satellite choices are the digital satellite systems and Primestar digital satellite service, said Tony Magoulas, a representative for RadioShack. Both systems offer CD-quality sound, laserdisc-quality reception and programming options that include access to premium channels, pay-perview movies, sports and specials.

"Sales of home television satellites systems are strong and getting stronger," he said. "Lower prices, attractive marketing plans, and a range of programming options have captured the attention of the American consumers. We expect it to be one of the hottest products since the VCR and cellular phones."

The one drawback of these dishes is they have "rain fade," Parmer said. He said that it takes a good, strong storm to weaken the feed: "It would take the kind of storm that people should be in their basement and not watching TV anyway," Parmer said.

Parmer said that satellites are better than cable television in many ways. He said there are five HBO channels, three channels for Cinemax and Showtime and countless others while cable is very limited.

"They say you can have X amount of channels for X amount of dollars and that's it," he said.

He said that cable subscribers even have to pay to have channels taken off.

"I had a guy from Dexter call me wanting a satellite," he said. "He had cable and didn't want M-TV on there for his kid to watch. "The only way he could get M-TV off is to charge him $7.50."

The way the satellite works is that a program provider beams their programming 23,000 miles into a satellite into space, which then re-beams the programming to the satellite dishes, Parmer said.

Parmer said that he gets about one customer per week with a customer base of about 2,000.

Many think the digital will overtake the former dishes, called C-bands. C-bands are the bigger dishes that are commonly seen in back yards.

The digital-dish systems program providers use a C-band satellite system to receive the same analog signal that the C-band satellite owners receive, said Adrienne Pierre, manager of Marketing Satellite Services.

"So the little dish owners get the same signal as C-band satellite owners," she said.